'Teddy Roosevelt' Charms Lake Hopatcong

Looking amazingly well for someone who has been dead for 90 years, Theodore Roosevelt returned to Lake Hopatcong this summer as one of the fundraising attractions of the Lake Hopatcong Historical Society.

His first visit was to his friend Hudson Maxim and Roosevelt looked very much like the photograph he autographed and gave to Maxim.

In spite of the familiar face, stance and suit, Roosevelt said his visit to the high school in Los Angeles named for him resulted in students saying he was “the Monopoly man.”

The one non-authentic item was Roosevelt’s glasses which had ear pieces while in the 19th and early 20th Century Roosevelt wore pinc nez.

Roosevelt said he was happy to meet the “denizens of the Lake country of Northern New Jersey” and assured them he “have (sic) not come back to life because Dick Cheney needs hunting lessons.”

He reminded the packed dining room at the Jefferson House in Nolan’s Point that he is remembered for the first National Parks and Forests which he created with his friend Gifford Pinchot who lived just up the Delaware in Milford.

His love of the outdoors came from childhood asthma and a doctor who prescribed plenty of outdoor exercise. He did calesthenics, swam, rowed and boxed and as an adult was 5’8” and 220 pounds, a “feather” compared to his successor as president, William Howard Taft.

When Roosevelt was president, the extremely tall and heavy Taft was governor of the Philippines. Word reached Washington that Taft was ill, so the secretary of state cabled to ask about his health. He cabled back he was well and rode a horse for 20 miles that day. The secretary cabled back to ask about the horse.

Angry at Taft’s policies and unburdened by the term limits imposed during the Truman Administration, Roosevelt decided to run against the incumbent in 1912, coining the term “throwing my hat in the ring.” He defeated Taft in 11 of the13 Republican primaries and his nomination at the convention in Chicago was seconded by noted social progressive Jane Addams, even though women didn’t have the vote yet. Women’s suffrage was on Roosevelt’s platform, but Taft got the nomination.

Roosevelt came from an interesting family. He talked about his father, TR Sr., who paid someone to take his place in the draft for the Civil War, then spent the war distributing allotments to military families. He also talked about his mother’s Southern family, the Bullochs, and how his mother, grandmother and aunt sent aid to their family and friends in Georgia.

In a way, politics entered his life early.

“One of my earliest memories,” he said, standing on a chair to be seen by the entire audience, “was in my grandfather’s house on Union Square watching Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession with my three siblings.”

The future president went to Harvard, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

“I majored in natural history,” he said. “Most of my friends majored in the night life across the Charles River in Boston.”

“My father said the family did well enough to provide the bread, but if I wanted butter and jam, I had to work.”

His father died at age 48 of stomach cancer, during Teddy’s sophomore year. A tutor, sensing the wilderness was always restorative to the young man, sent him to Maine. He traveled through lumber camps with a hunting guide, beginning each day with a Bible devotion and one of the places he read his devotion was later named Bible Point.

While at Harvard, Teddy fell in love with Alice Hathaway Lee of Chestnut Hill, Boston. “I proposed to her in the spring of my junior year, she said no. I proposed to her in the fall of my senior year, she said no. I proposed to her in the spring of my senior year, she said yes.”

Having soured on the idea of working in a lab all day, Roosevelt attended Columbia Law School. Disappointed that “a lawyer is not trained to fight of righteousness and justice,” he stopped by Republican Headquarters one day. Eventually, he ran for the state Assembly to the chagrin of his family who believed “politics is not for gentlemen.”

While he was in the Assembly, his daughter was born in New York City. He was summoned back to the city and on the same morning, his mother died of typhoid fever and his wife died of Bright’s Disease. His brother, Eliot (father of Eleanor) said “there is a curse upon this house.”

It was after losing his beloved Alice that he traveled to North Dakota and took up ranching.

“The West was still the Wild West of Owen Wister stories and Frederick Remington paintings,” he said.  He ran his Elkhorn Ranch, riding with the cowboys, in spite of his silver spurs from Tiffany’s.

“I never would have been president if it weren’t for North Dakota,” he said.

His daughter, named Alice after her mother, was in the care of his sister and on visits home he asked his sister not to invite Edith Carow, his high school sweetheart to come to the house. He said he didn’t believe in second marriages and did want to see her.

“Of course, she didn’t listen,” he said and he and Edith were soon married.  Nine months and one week later, Theodore Jr. was born, followed by four more children.

That made six, including Alice, who was 17 when they came to the White House. Alice smoked in public, stayed out late, drove a car (which was not acceptable for a woman in those days) and kept a snake in her purse. When her father told her not to smoke under his roof, she climbed onto the White House roof and smoked on it.

Once his friend, the writer Owen Wister, asked Roosevelt if he could control Alice. He said he could either be president of the United States or control Alice, but he couldn’t do both.

Not that she was the only rowdy Roosevelt. The two youngest, Archie and Quentin, once dropped a 30-pound snowball on a police officer, knocking him unconscious. The White House was full of cats and dogs, a badger named Josiah and a parrot.

Roosevelt answered questions and charmed the audience at the Jefferson House, never stepping out of character.